Outrage as Tory MP Andrew Bridgen compares Covid vaccine roll-out to the HOLOCAUST

Rishi Sunak has slammed the ‘utterly unacceptable’ actions of a Tory MP who compared the Covid vaccine rollout to the Holocaust.

Andrew Bridgen was stripped of the party whip after an astonishing outburst on Twitter that led to widespread condemnation from politicians, Jewish groups and medical experts.

The MP for North West Leicestershire has made a series of anti-vaxxer claims on social media and in the Commons chamber in recent weeks.

But action was finally taken against him this morning after he shared an article on the Pfizer and Moderna jabs online, based on safety data reportedly from US health agencies, and added: ‘As one consultant cardiologist said to me this is the biggest crime against humanity since the holocaust.’

Mr Sunak voiced his own anger after the comment, made in a now-deleted Tweet, was raised by former health secretary Matt Hancock at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Tory chief whip Simon Hart took action because the remarks ‘crossed a line’, and other senior Tory MPs lined up to criticise his remarks.

One said they were ‘disgraceful’ and another warned that if he prevented people from being vaccinated he would have ‘blood on his hands’.

It caps a turbulent period for the now independent MP, who is currently serving a five-day Commons ban for breaking rules on paid lobbying.

Andrew Bridgen shared an article on the Pfizer and Moderna jabs on Twitter, which was based on safety data published by US health agencies

The Tory MP for North West Leicestershire said: ‘As one consultant cardiologist said to me this is the biggest crime against humanity since the holocaust’

Chief whip Simon Hart said Mr Bridgen’s ‘crossed the line’ and removed the whip with ‘immediate effect’ pending a formal investigation

How safe are the Covid vaccines?

Since the pandemic began, nearly 180,000 people in the UK have died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid. Meanwhile, more than 1million have died in the US.

Before vaccines were created, health chiefs had no weapons in their arsenal to effectively fight the virus. It meant countries could only turn to restrictions, such as lockdowns, to shelter people from the pathogen and save lives.

But at the end of 2020, Covid vaccines made by Pfizer and AstraZeneca were approved — just one year after the virus was first detected in China — which changed the game.

Within months, the robust defences the vaccines provided gave policymakers across the world the confidence to press ahead with easing virus curbs.

Evidence from rollouts across the world — with more than 13billion doses dished out globally — has repeatedly proven the vaccines are the best way to slash the risk of severe illness and death from the virus.

Latest data from the UK Health Security Agency shows that a Covid booster cuts the risk of hospitalisation by up to 84 per cent among 18 to 64-year-olds and 90 per cent among over-65s.

The risk of dying from a Covid infection falls by up to 94 per cent after vaccination, it estimates.

Questions have been asked about the safety of Covid vaccines, given how quickly they were rolled out.

Yet the fears are ungrounded, with all of the jabs approved for use in the UK and US passing rigorous safety tests.

Like with any medication or vaccine, however, the jabs do have risks. The majority are mild, such as a sore arm, flu-like symptoms and headaches.

Some concerns have been raised about myocarditis and pericarditis — inflammation of the heart — following vaccination, especially among young people.

But MHRA data shows that even among 18 to 29-year-olds, there are only 10 to 60 cases per million doses given.

Experts insist the majority of cases are mild, and that rates in Britain are lower than in Israel and the US, where concerns were first sparked. The virus itself can also cause the condition.

Concerns were also raised about the extremely rare reports of blood clots after being vaccinated with AstraZeneca. This saw the jab only offered to over-40s.

But no other convincing safety concerns have been spotted in the data, which is why officials insist they are safe.

Anti-vaxx communities peddle myths that the jabs are to blame for a spike in heart deaths, but real-world data doesn’t support these claims.

Other critics say the vaccines are pointless because they do not have a sustained effect at preventing transmission and that natural immunity is better.

However, the vaccines were designed to prevent the most severe outcomes from the virus — hospitalisation and death.

And while protection wanes over time — which is why the most vulnerable are invited for booster doses — they still effectively defend against serious illness.

Natural immunity — protection against the virus from an infection — wasn’t considered a viable approach among health chiefs before the vaccine rollout, due to the risk of a high death rate and overwhelming the NHS.

But studies have shown that hybrid immunity — both getting vaccinated and being exposed to the virus — can further boost immunity and is now safe, as the jabs have blunted the risk of severe illness.

The tweet gained 150,000 views in just two hours, with dozens of users of the social media platform hitting out at the ‘disgusting analogy’ and labelling him ‘dangerous’.

Olivia Marks-Woldman, chief executive of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, told MailOnline: ‘We find it disturbing particularly as we approach Holocaust Memorial Day that some people think it’s appropriate to invoke the imagery of the Holocaust to score political points.

‘The murder of six million people is not a subject for flippant analogies or political exploitation. There are other ways in which people can get their messages across, without using genocide as shock value. We owe it to victims of the Holocaust – and survivors – not to minimise their pain and suffering.’

At Prime Minister’s Questions, former health secretary Matt Hancock highlighted the ‘disgusting, anti-Semitic, anti-vax conspiracy theories’.

Without referring directly to Mr Bridgen, the former Cabinet minister said the comments were ‘not only deeply offensive but anti-scientific and have no place in this House or in our wider society’.

Mr Sunak responded by ‘completely condemning those kinds of comments we saw this morning in the strongest possible terms’.

‘Obviously it is utterly unacceptable to make linkages and use language like that and I’m determined that the scourge of anti-Semitism is eradicated,’ he told MPs.

Announcing Mr Bridgen’s suspension, Chief whip Simon Hart said the MP had ‘crossed a line, causing great offence in the process’.

‘As a nation we should be very proud of what has been achieved through the vaccine programme,’ he said.

‘The vaccine is the best defence against Covid that we have. Misinformation about the vaccine causes harm and costs lives.

‘I am therefore removing the whip from Andrew Bridgen with immediate effect, pending a formal investigation.’

One Tory friend of Mr Bridgen told MailOnline the situation is ‘really sad’ and the disgraced MP was overshadowing ‘good work’ he had done in the past.

‘If it is the end of his career it is sad,’ the MP said.

But Simon Clarke, Tory MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, said the tweet was ‘disgraceful’.

And Michael Fabricant, Tory MP for Lichfield, said if Mr Bridgen’s comment ‘deters people from being vaccinated and causes deaths as a direct consequence, he’ll have blood on his hands’.

‘His tweets are wholly irresponsible,’ he added.

Lord Mann, the Government’s adviser on anti-Semitism, said: ‘There is no possibility that Bridgen can be allowed to stand at the next election. He cannot claim that he didn’t realise the level of offence that his remarks cause.’

It is not the first time Mr Bridgen has faced criticism for his views on Covid vaccines.

He tweeted about an essay in a publication affiliated to the British Medical Journal and claimed it ‘confirmed’ the vaccine ‘more harm than benefit to younger people’.

‘The roll out must be suspended and children must not be put at risk through these experimental mRNA treatments,’ he said.

But the BMJ last week hit back at Mr Bridgen, arguing his comment was ‘misleading for several reasons’.

A spokesperson for the publication said: ‘The JME aims to further the ethical analysis of key issues in healthcare.

‘The views, analysis, and conclusions reached in its content belong to the authors, not the journal itself.

‘The article develops an argument about the ethics of mandatory Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Covid vaccine booster doses in some American universities.

‘It does not claim that Covid vaccines are unsafe, only that based on the available evidence, the risk-benefit ratio doesn’t justify mandating booster shots in college students, in the authors’ opinion.’

And in December, Mr Bridgen claimed that someone in a ‘prominent leadership role’ in the British Heart Foundation was ‘covering up clear data that reveals the mRNA vaccine increases inflammation of the heart arteries’.

Anti-vax protesters showing support for Andrew Bridgen at Westminster underground station in London today

Mr Bridgen presented no evidence to support his claims, other than it being from a ‘whistleblower from a very reliable source’.

The BHF said it did not recognise Mr Bridgen’s comments and strongly refuted his allegations.

The MP is currently on the second day of a five-day suspension from the Commons.

The move was recommended by the Standards Committee after Mr Bridgen failed to declare a financial interest in Mere Plantations — a reforestation company with links to Ghana but based in the UK — which he was lobbying on behalf of.

A report by the committee states he failed to declare that he was paid £12,000 by the company in ‘eight emails to ministers, and in five meetings with public officials’.

Mr Bridgen’s actions were described as ‘careless and cavalier’ and led him to breach the MPs’ code of conduct.

The committee also determined he attempted to influence Standards Commissioner Kathryn Stone, who conducted the investigation.

He reportedly told her he had heard a ‘rumour’ that she would only receive a peerage if she ruled against him.

In other health news…

Health secretary Steve Barclay accuses ambulance unions of putting patients at risk with chaotic plans for handling emergencies during strikes – as Brits are told to use their ‘common sense’ and only ring 999 for a ‘life or limb’ emergency

Only 1 PER CENT of Brits know the tell-tale symptoms of deadly cancers… so take this quiz to see if YOU fare any better

Only call an ambulance for a ‘life or limb’ emergency, public are warned as 999 crew begin latest strike that ‘will bring even MORE disruption than the previous walkout’

Why the data tweeted by Andrew Bridgen doesn’t prove vaccines are unsafe

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen today tweeted, then deleted, a link to data which suggests the Covid mRNA vaccines are unsafe due to a plethora of side effects linked with the jabs.

The data, shared on a blog called Zero Hedge, is said to be from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), via a Freedom of Information Request submitted by The Epoch Times.

It claims to show the number of Covid mRNA vaccine side effects reported to the agency’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) – a surveillance system set up in the 1990s and designed to monitor the risks of all jabs used in America.

If the analysis was to be taken at face value, it would suggest that more than 70,000 heart-related ‘major’ side effects have been logged after a Pfizer or Moderna jab. On top of that, there would have been 50,000 affecting the brain and in the region of 25,000 blood clots.

However, if the data is from the CDC’s VAERS database, as it is claimed to be, then it doesn’t paint the full picture.

All Americans are urged to report any health problem they notice post-vaccination, even if they aren’t certain the jab was to blame.

In essence, it means that the jab will not be to blame for all the events. The exact proportion that will be down to the jab is not something the CDC estimates. It merely keeps a log of complaints to spot trends in the data that could signal a serious side effect.

It states only that VAERS reports ‘may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable’.

The CDC adds: ‘Just because an adverse event happened after a person received a vaccine does not mean the vaccine caused the adverse event.’

The UK has a similar reporting mechanism in place, called the Yellow Card Scheme, where around 475,000 adverse events to Covid vaccines have been reported.

It helped detect an extremely rare blood-clotting complication of the AstraZeneca jab, which led to it being only offered to over-40s because the benefits did not clearly outweigh the risks to the young. The side effect was so rare that it wasn’t spotted in initial trials involving tens of thousands of people before the jab was given the green light.

But other concerns, such as Covid vaccines interfering with menstrual cycles, have yet to be fully substantiated in the data.

Under the surveillance system in the UK, reports of flatulence, yawning and crying have been logged by vaccine recipients. But, based on the same logic as the CDC’s VAERS, it does not mean that the jabs are to blame.

source: dailymail.co.uk